1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a crabmeat extraction device and method for extracting meat from the bodies of crustacea by suction techniques. The present invention has been found to be particularly useful in the extraction of meat from the bodies of cooked or boiled crustacea, especially as a system for extracting meat from the bodies of crabs, and hence, will be discussed with particular reference thereto.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The cleaning of crabmeat from the bodies of crabs for home use or commercial sale has long been a difficult endeavor, as the preparation of the edible part of the crab has always involved a considerable amount of difficult, unpleasant hand labor. In fact, until the present invention, relatively small scale users, such as for example the housewife, have had to depend totally on hand processing and picking of the crab meat, which has been a substantial deterrent to such use.
Even for commercial processors, the search for a practical way of picking the crabmeat from the crab body has been long and extensive, with many different ways explored to remove the meat from the crab shell in an efficient manner with minimum shell content in the meat. Thus, to reduce the amount of manual labor and to increase the efficiency involved in the manual labor of extracting meat from crab bodies, various mechanical and pneumatic systems have been suggested, but none have yet been generally successful.